Examining coverage of news and sports using the rules of formal logic.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

NPR Proudly Spreading Right-Wing Talking Points Since . . .

I really don't know why I listen to NPR in the morning anymore. This morning featured an analysis of Evan Bayh's decision not to seek reelection to the Senate. The interviewer asked, "What did he mean when he said there was too much partisanship in the Senate?" The analyst responded that he was talking about mean, lefty bloggers on the interwebs or something. Perhaps they could have listened to Bayh's actual words in which he actually cited an example of the actual partisanship that he was actually upset about. His example was the idea for a bipartisan commission to be congressionally empowered to make budget cuts to reduce the deficit. (This is a bad idea anyway--did he enter the Senate to get someone else to make tough decisions for him? Apparently. Moreover, the deficit is not the problem right now, unemployment is the problem.) So, what was the problem with his failure of bipartisanship? 7 senators who had previously co-sponsored the legislation had voted against the legislation entirely because Obama had endorsed it. Essentially, this was something these senators believed in (if anyone can say such a thing about a politician), but they changed their positions on it entirely because they did not want Obama to have something that he wanted. (If Obama tries to pass a bill praising, Mom, apple pie and baseball, or truth, justice and the American way, would they vote against that? Someone ought to make them decide.) Who were those 7 masked, hypocritical bandits? Why, they were all Republicans, of course.

In short, instead of actually paying attention to Bayh's own example of excessive partisanship on the part of Republicans (although Bayh was too bipartisan to mention their party affiliation), the "analyst" on NPR threw some crap about lefties against the wall in the hope that it would stick. It simply boggles the mind that no one on that program has any interest in informing their listeners but prefer simply to make things up, especially in support of right-wing propaganda.

(To be clear, Bayh apparently really doesn't like the lefty bloggers, and they don't like him. But the lefty bloggers are not in the Senate. And if, somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, their influence has grown so vast and pervasive that they can influence Senators to be more liberal, then NPR was still totally irresponsible in not mentioning Bayh's specific complaint about Republican senators.)